Sony's new compact, waterproof-coated phone now available for preorder

It seems like just a few short hours ago that the Sony Xperia Z1 Compact was announced. Now the world can preorder it from at least a couple different places, including Phones4u and Unlocked-mobiles.com.

The latter will have it available SIM-free with stock expected around the second week of February. It will be available in black, white, pink and even lime in the UK. The Unlocked-mobiles.com preorder page can be found here.

Phones4u is offering some promotions with the preorder of the phone. With each preorder, Phones4u will throw in a Sony SRS-BTX300 wireless speaker for your listening pleasure. Some lucky ducks will also receive £65's worth free movies and music. You can find more info on the Phones4u preorder page here.

Carphone Warehouse has also announced that it will stock the phone. At the moment, it just looks like interested parties can let Carphone Warehouse know of their interest. Carphone Warehouse will then inform interested parties when their bouncing baby smartphone is available. The form to register interest is here.

Just to recap, here's how our very own Alex Dobie summed up the Xperia Z1 Compact:

While other manufacturers' "mini" smartphones tend to sacrifice hardware muscle in order to pack everything into a smaller [phone], it's impressive that Sony has managed to cram the same internals into a smaller body. The only real downgrades are the screen and battery — both understandable due to the size constraints of this 4.3-incher. You'll get a 720p panel on the Z1 Compact versus 1080p on the regular Z1, and a 2300mAh battery instead of 3000mAh.

The only strike against it is weight. Specs I say 137g. I think that's heavier than Sam. GS4 and Nexus 5.

It might need to be that heavy to pack those specs in, but for the money I'd be inclined toward GS4 mini because that comes in at 107g. Weight and size work be more important to me if I was shopping small form factor.

Just curious but why is weight that important for you? You would go with the GS4 even though its specs are cut right down?
For me anyway, I like the weight as it adds a quality feel to it unlike the Samsung phones that feel cheap because of the plastics and weight.

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